You Don't Remember Me
by BlackBird5
Summary: Severus Snape has just turned himself in to the Ministry and recieves a visit
1. Default Chapter

You Don't Remember Me

By BlackBird5

Rating: PG-13 for language

Song Fic. To You Don't Remember Me by Steve Lane & Dick Winzeler

Severus Snape slowly opened his eyes as he heard the door open and then shut them again quickly. The lights that never were turned on for him had suddenly flared to life, painfully bright light flooding the cold little cell that the Ministry had tossed him in.

'Satanic bastards,' he thought to himself as he tried to block the light from his eyes. He had turned himself in to them and they seemed to have decided to make the time leading up to his death as decidedly unpleasant as they could. 

In the back of his mind he realized he was scared about what was going to happen to him next. But another, much louder part just didn't care anymore, had given up. Too many deaths on his hands, too many memories that kept making him wake up from ghastly nightmares, screaming.

"Is he the one?" a kind voice said. Severus looked up, startled, from the corner he had curled up against. Even as the bright lights blinded him from seeing who was there, he recognized that voice. "Gods, he's so young." 

Severus rubbed at his burning eyes with his grubby hands and was able to make out a tall man, taller than himself, with long white hair and wise blue eyes standing next to three Aurors. 

One of the Aurors nodded an answer to the first question and with a rude snort, waved his hand towards Severus in obvious disgust. "Albus, meet our resident reluctant Death Eater."

__

A crowded room

This afternoon

They introduced me to you

Severus sat up onto his knees as his former teacher approached the bars of his cell. Cautiously, Severus lifted his eyes and at once met the intense blue eyes. The power coming from them was so strong that he found that he couldn't look away. 

The harsh light in the room was forgotten as Severus was assaulted by the even brighter light from Dumbledore's eyes. His body began to shake and he felt irrational terror rise in the back of his throat. A high pitched cry escaped before he could stop it.

The probing light in the Headmaster's eyes suddenly softened and he turned back to his companions and asked them to lower the lights. 

Shadows seeped back into the room and Severus sighed in relief. Dumbledore turned back to him and smiled gently. "All right?"

Severus nodded. He was feeling a bit better than all right. For the first time since his voluntary imprisonment, no, since he had gotten the blasted Mark burned into his arm, his heart gave a small flutter of hope.

__

As I was staring into your eyes

I couldn't tell if I saw

Hope or love or compromise

Dumbledore smile suddenly vanished to be replaced by a small frown. Severus froze as dread crept over him. Whatever fragile optimism had dared to stir shattered. 

Severus watched helplessly as Dumbledore's eyes moved to Severus's sleeve where the Mark was burned forever into his skin. Severus flushed and lowered his eyes in shame, pulling his arm behind his back.

"Tell me, child," Dumbledore said, causing Severus, against his will, to look up again. "Why are you here?" 

Severus looked at the dust on the stone floor of his cell and shrugged his thin shoulders. "Cause I couldn't live with myself any longer," he whispered, his voice hoarse from little use in the past three days. He ducked his head and drew back further into himself. "It was wrong." 

What was he supposed to say? What did they fucking _want_ from him? Was death too good for him? Just get it over with! please

Severus heard Dumbledore sigh and then move away and back to the others in the room. "You said you wanted my opinion-" 

Severus pulled his legs closer to his body and put his head on top of his knees, his unkempt black hair falling over his face, the very picture of defeat.

__

But I was wrong

The look was gone

Our conversation was through

Dumbledore and the Aurors continued to talk, about him, Severus supposed, as they kept looking back in his direction. Severus figured that they were discussing with the Headmaster what to do with him. A Death Eater that had turned himself in was rare indeed. It could be used to their advantage. 

Well fuck them! There was no way he was going to help them. He came to them to die, not to bloody aid their cause.

"But he hasn't been very cooperative," Severus head the older Auror say, "Hasn't utter a word since he got here, until you, that is." 

Dumbledore glanced over to Severus and saw the young man still watching him. A small smile flirted across Dumbledore's lips before he turned back around to his conversation with the Aurors.

__

The smile you gave me

Was just a brief affair

"He doesn't exactly look the stubborn type," Dumbledore answered, gesturing to back to Severus's cell. A small frown found it's way onto Severus's pale face. It wasn't really anger, he was just confused. 

How many times in school had the Headmaster told him that he wouldn't get in so much trouble if he would just control his temper, if he wasn't so stubborn?

"Oh, he didn't seem to like that," one of the Aurors said, amused. 

Severus ignored him. He was stubborn, always had been. Yet Dumbledore was saying that he wasn't. Why? It didn't make any sense.

A sudden thought caught his breath and he nearly burst into tears with understanding. Dumbledore would have never said that if…oh Merlin help!

__

And anyone could see

You don't remember me

Severus shook his head, angry with himself. Angry that he felt so hurt that the Headmaster didn't recognize him. But Albus Dumbledore was the kindest person he had ever known in his short life. 

Dumbledore looked over at him again and his eyes betrayed a curiosity. 'Could he be wondering why the unkempt miserable prisoner can't stop staring at him?' Severus mused bitterly.

He wanted to scream. How dare he forget! Through his years in school he had maintained the belief that the Headmaster didn't see his students just for what house they had been sorted into. Stupid, stupid childish belief. 'Looks like the Great Albus Dumbledore is just like the rest of them.'

Severus struggled to keep tears of hopelessness in check. But to be forgotten by him, it hurt. Oh it hurt so much more than it logically ever should.

__

I kept on staring

Into your eyes

And once again I felt

What you don't even recognize

Severus closed his eyes and tried to block out the conversation about him. He caught a few words, mainly from the Aurors. Something about sending him back to spy of the Death Eaters. 

'I'd die first,' Severus thought darkly. He wasn't going back. He had risked his life and sanity to get away. There was no way in hell that he was going back.

Vaguely he heard Dumbledore protest their using him as a spy. Something about that he was too young. Then a harsher voice declared that he'd be better off dead or in Azkaban. 

Severus gave a small involuntary shudder. 

He had visited that foul prison once after his father had been taken there. He still had nightmares about the screams that swelled up from insane men and women, reduced to shadows of their former selves, that resided there, begging for death.

"Young man." Severus blinked and then refocused his eyes. When had the Headmaster gotten back over in front of him? "I'm sorry," Severus whispered, "I didn't hear you." 

Dumbledore nodded as if he had expected it and then kneeled down so that they were practically eye to eye. "I'm leaving. Will you corporate with the Ministry? At least talk to them?" 

Severus looked back down at his hands and shrugged. Dumbledore sighed and got to his feet. "I'll talk to _you_," Severus said suddenly, halting the Headmaster. 

Dumbledore turned back around to look at the scrawny, destitute figure that couldn't meet his gaze anymore. "Why me?" he asked, trying to understand the creature in front of him. 

But the prisoner wouldn't look up. "You don't remember," Severus muttered before retreating into his mind and shutting out everything around him.

__

You had to leave

I should believe

Too many years have gone by

Severus stayed in the dark recesses of his mind until he heard the heavy door clang shut, leaving him in almost complete, blessed, darkness. Now he curled up on his side and began to weep. 

Oh why hadn't he just killed himself and gotten it over quickly? Because he was too scared. Coward, traitor, what else could he add to the list? Slytherin, let's not forget that one, dangerous, rebellious, unreliable, ambitious, 

'Here's one for you Headmaster, forgotten.' 

__

Sometimes I wake up

And hold your memory

That's why it hurts to see

Albus sighed as he walked with the Aurors back toward the lighter part of the building, away from the holding cells where that forlorn soul looked out at him from behind eyes blacker than night. Such heart-breaking eyes. All light that might have ever existed in them gone as surely rain will douse a fire. 

And the Ministry wanted to use him like a tool to gain some ground in their fight against Voldemort. They didn't even know if they could trust him to come back for he would not speak to them. 'And yet,' Albus wondered, 'He said that he would speak to me. Why? And what did he mean that I don't remember?' 

The Auror on his right turned sharply. "I despise that one," he growled. "It's disgusting." 

It took Albus a few minutes to realize that he was talking about the prisoner his own thoughts were currently with. "He's very young," Albus tried. 

The Auror just rolled his eyes. "Ages make no difference," he snapped. "If we didn't need what he knows so much, I would have seen him dead by now." He turned fiercely to the Headmaster. "I'm not about to risk lives if we can't trust his information. Can we trust him, Albus?"

Albus shook his head. "I am not a mind reader, my friend. I don't know enough about him by speaking to him once. I am not the one you should ask if you wish to know if you can trust him." 

The Auror was practically raging. "If you don't know, who are we supposed to ask? Merlin, he was one of yours! If anyone should know, it's you!" 

Dumbledore stopped walking and frowned. He suddenly felt very cold. "What do you mean, one of mine?" he asked. 

One of the other Aurors, a younger one checked the folder he was carrying. "Well, he went to Hogwarts, graduated two years ago. Didn't you recognize him?" 

Dumbledore shivered. The dark, dark eyes following him as he talked to the Aurors who would decide his fate. What child had gone through Hogwarts that he could be so changed that he, Albus Dumbledore, couldn't recognize him? 

Albus quickly thought through the names of the children that had recently left his school, but a name wouldn't come for that boy. He couldn't think of one that that would fit that unhappy young man in the cell they had just left. 

"Didn't you recognize him?" the Auror asked again.

Albus sighed and shook his head sadly with the truth. "No, no I didn't."

__

You don't remember me

__

~TBC

A/N: May become a slash fic.

__

NO flaming


	2. How Long Must This Go On

How Long Must This Go On?  


By BlackBird5

Song Fic: How Long Must This Go On is From Beauty and the Beast Broadway

Rated: PG

Warning: Slash status still undetermined

Disclaimer: I own neither song nor characters

Author's Note: One word in the song is changed for artistic reasons  


Dumbledore opened the door slowly and turned on one of the weaker yellow lights that wouldn't hurt the dark eyes of the young wizard who occupied the small cell. Severus was sitting the far corner of his cell with his back to the Headmaster. "They tell me you haven't been eating," Dumbledore started. 

Without turning around, Severus shrugged. "If they won't just kill me and get it over with, I might as well work on it myself," came the cold, careless reply.

Dumbledore shook his head and approached the bars. He was very worried about Severus. In all the years that he had known the other wizard, he had never known Severus Snape to be indifferent about his own life. Severus was a survivor; he wasn't the kind to waste away because he felt he deserved it. 

"You don't really mean that, Severus," Dumbledore said gently, hoping that he was speaking the truth, even if Severus didn't fully realize it.

But all he received was a harsh, humorless laugh from the young man. "Oh but I do. Tell me," Severus turned so that he could see the Headmaster. 

At the sight of his face, Dumbledore nearly gasped aloud in surprise. All across Severus's face were dark bruises, obviously not self inflicted, and his dark, pretty eyes were now devoid of any bright spark of life. He had seen livelier eyes on corpses. Severus had not stopped eating, Dumbledore realized in horror; his jailers had stopped feeding him.

"Did you figure out who I was on your own," Severus continued with an edge of venom in his voice that made Dumbledore want to weep, "Or did they have to tell you?" 

Dumbledore winced at Severus's choice of words. He had indeed had to ask. When told that the forlorn, unhappy young man that had turned himself in as a Death Eater was one Severus Eugene Snape, Dumbledore had refused to believe it. 

It couldn't be the Severus he knew. His Severus was too smart to get messed up in such dark activities. He had tried to believe that the boy in the cell had used a false name. But the eyes. Those heartbreaking, heartbroken eyes. He had seen them before. Just once. 

The night Severus was almost killed by Remus Lupin's werewolf form and Dumbledore had forbidden the young Slytherin to tell anyone, and when the child had come to the conclusion that his life meant nothing to the Headmaster…yes, he had seen those eyes that night.

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How long must this go on?  
This cruel trick of fate  
I simply made one careless, wrong decision

"Severus, I'm so sorry," Dumbledore whispered. Merlin, why had he waited so long to come back? Because he didn't want to believe this? Because he was ashamed of loosing yet another? Didn't this young life mean more than personal pride? 

That reply, though not directly answering his question, appeared to be enough and Severus's chest rose and fell sharply as he struggled with some unknown emotion. "So," he managed to get out, "You did forget me."

Dumbledore shook his head fanatically. "No, I did not recognize you. It is quite different." 

Severus declined to reply, and Dumbledore took it was a good sign. "I could never forget you," he rushed on, "Not you, Severus. Severus, who tried on more than one occasion to stare down the entire school, and nearly succeeded twice. Severus, who is allergic to strawberries. Severus, with the beautiful eyes."

Severus turned away sharply and abruptly and Dumbledore thought for a moment that he had angered the young wizard. Then he saw the thin shoulders of the poor prisoner begin to jerk with the sobs he tried to keep silent. 

Dumbledore took the key he had been given, unlocked the door, and then let himself into the small cell. Being careful so not to startle the young wizard, Dumbledore knelt down beside him and very gently pulled the unresisting man into his arms. 

All the fear, despair, and loneliness that Severus had been holding back burst through damaged defenses and he clung to Dumbledore in desperate hopelessness.

Dumbledore held Severus while he cried, speaking in low, soothing tones and stroking his matted hair. He stayed there with his former student until all the tears Severus had to cry were gone and he rested, very weary, against him. 

Dumbledore gently pushed a few long stands of dark, dirty hair out of Severus's face. His poor, poor, little Slytherin. This was all his fault. "I want to help you, Severus," Dumbledore whispered.

Severus looked up slowly, his dark eyes red from crying. "There is nothing you can do," he answered with a tone of resignation that frightened the Headmaster, "I am beyond help." 

Dumbledore hugged Severus to his chest as if the young man were a small, precious child. "I don't believe that," he assured him with unflagging certainty. 

Severus stared at him for a second, unblinking, as if trying to read his thoughts. Then he pushed the Headmaster away, trying to get some space. "Let go," he said, becoming agitated, "Just leave me alone." 

Dumbledore released Severus rather than fight him and risk further harm to the young body. Severus moved away and closed his eyes in a visible attempt to block out everything. 

Dumbledore stood slowly, caught between the instinct to stay and soothe the hurting, and Severus's obvious desire to be alone. 

Severus's head snapped up suddenly and his black eyes were dark in anger and pain. "I said go!" he screamed.

__

And then that child was gone  
And left me in this state  
An object of revulsion and derision

Dumbledore sighed and left the cell, closing and locking it behind him only out of reflex and then looked back at the unlovely figure that had curled up against the wall, once again eerily silent. "I'll tell the House Elves to send in some food," Dumbledore said quietly. 

Severus didn't look at him but nodded his consent with a barely perceivable motion of his head. 

Dumbledore turned off the lights, returning the room to the dark that Severus seemed to prefer, and closed the door behind him. 

Two Aurors were waiting outside for him. "Well?" one demanded. 

Dumbledore ignored him and turned to the other, hoping he would not ask questions, "Prepare him to leave," he turned back to look at the angry Auror straight in the eye, daring him to object. "I'm taking him with me."

"The information," the Auror hissed as his subordinate hurried off to find Severus's release papers, "Will he bring us the information we need?"

Dumbledore glared at him. "I don't know. He would barely talk to me. He doesn't trust me. And I have done nothing to earn that trust. I need time, Alastor."

Moody folded his arms across his chest. "You have two months, Albus. Two months and if he tries to run or continues to refuse to aid us, he will be shipped out to Azkaban, I promise you that." 

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Hated  
Is there no one?  
Who can show me  
How to win the world's forgiveness?

~TBC

Author's Note: I have not yet received any flames (To 'a', no worries, I didn't take your review as a flame) let's try and keep it that way.

Question: Should I keep putting the songs in the story? Or are they annoying?


End file.
